After leaving Janet and Cassie to talk in private – after all, there was going to be a lot of explaining to do – Sam knew that she had one more phone call that she needed to make. And despite the late hour, she knew it was something that had to be done that night.

She headed down to her lab and shut the door behind her for privacy. The number that she dialed was one that she knew by heart.

"Hello?" Jack sleepily grumbled into the phone when he answered. Sam flinched slightly; it was even later in DC than it was in Colorado.

"Jack, it's me."

The sound of her voice combined with the late hour woke him up a bit. "Sam? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Well… it's a very long story," she answered, knowing how much he was going to hate the ambiguity. "I know that I'm supposed to be getting on a plane in the morning to come see you, but I really need you to come here instead."

"Why?"

"I'll explain when you get here."

Now he was getting annoyed. "Carter – " he tried to 'pull rank', but she wouldn't let him.

"Jack, trust me, this is NOT something to do over the phone."

He sighed heavily. Apparently he didn't have any choice but to do what she wanted – and he didn't like it. "You promise that you're all right?"

"I'm fine, I swear. The General's arranged for a plane to be waiting for you at Andrews."

"All right. I'll see you soon."

After hanging up, Sam headed back to check on Janet and Cassie. The two were sitting together in the room, trying to take everything in. Both had teary eyes when they looked up at Sam. "How are you doing?" she asked Cassie.

"A little confused," she admitted with a watery laugh. "This… this is pretty crazy. But thank you, so much, for telling me."

"The General is going to want to speak with you in the morning, Janet, but he authorized you leaving for the night."

"You can stay with me," Cassie immediately offered. "We can keep talking, figure things out."

"Are you sure?" Janet asked, and the younger woman nodded. "Okay. What about Jake and Abbie?" she asked Sam.

"I'm going to stay with them tonight. We can talk some more tomorrow; Jack's going to be here in the morning."

"All right."

"I'll walk you guys out," she offered.

"I always get lost when I come," Cassie informed Janet with a sheepish smile.

"Well, this place is kinda of like a labyrinth."

They were heading toward the elevator when they saw Daniel step out of his lab further down the hall. "He's working late," Janet commented to Sam, who nodded. All of the SG-1 team members had briefly come down to the infirmary earlier in the evening, but Janet had been busy trying to help Sam with Jake and Abbie. She was looking forward to getting to actually sit down and talk with them once things calmed a bit, especially Daniel.

She was about to call hello to him, but then someone else walked out of his lab as well. Vala was pestering him, as usual, but he didn't seem to mind so much.

Sam smiled as she watched. "They're like an old married couple sometimes," she told Janet, then noticed the expression of surprise on the other woman's face. "Are you okay?"

"F-fine," she lied. Sam looked back toward her teammates as they disappeared around the corner. It hadn't really been that big of a surprise to the other members of SG-1 when Daniel and Vala started a relationship, but apparently it was a shock for a newcomer to their reality. As she watched Janet try to recover from her surprise, she began to wonder exactly how many other things had been so different in her reality.

Once Janet and Cassie had left, Sam returned to the infirmary to watch over Jake and Abbie. She ended up falling asleep in the chair beside their bed and had a crick in her neck by the time she was awakened by a hand landing on her shoulder. She looked up to see Jack standing beside her.

"What time is it?" she quietly asked as she stretched.

"A little after 0600."

That told her a lot about how concerned he must have been. "I didn't mean you had to leave immediately, Jack."

"I wasn't going back to sleep after a phone call like that. What's going on? Who are they?"

"Jacob and Abigail," she told him, "O'Neill."

Jack blinked. "What?"

"You heard me."

"Um…you got some 'splaining to do, Sam."

She smiled slightly. "They're from a parallel universe. Remember when I told you about a mission a year and a half ago where we came home to find out that there was already another SG-1 here? And fourteen more came through the gate behind us."

Jack shrugged. "Yeah, vaguely." To him, Sam's mind was a limitless storage facility; practically everything she'd ever learned was still there and neatly filed. He'd barely kept all the mission reports and such straight when he'd been on SG-1 or heading the SGC; expecting him to keep track of their adventures after he left for Washington was pretty unrealistic.

"Well, they are the children of our alternate universe counterparts."

"You mean… They're Carter-O'Neills?" Sam nodded. "What are they doing here? Don't tell me that someone found another mirror."

Sam shook her head. The only quantum mirror that she knew about had been destroyed years earlier at Area 51 – and that probably wasn't a bad thing. "No. They were brought here because… because we're dead, their Earth is gone, and their galaxy is probably going to be lost to the Ori. They were brought here to be safe."

Jack looked back to the kids. "Damn," he softly murmured. He wasn't sure what answer he'd been expecting, but that wasn't it.

Sam considered admonishing him about language usage around the children, but let it go. After all, she wasn't sure what would have been a suitable and child-appropriate thing to say in this situation.

"Brought by who?" Jack suddenly asked. "If we're dead…"

Sam smiled slightly; the idea of getting her best friend back was still unbelievable and amazing. "Janet. In their reality, she was still alive. She'd come here before on that mission I was talking about, so she knew this reality was safe."

Jack nodded. "Lucky for them."

They both looked down as they heard Jake start mumbling in his sleep. They couldn't understand his words, but his face was pinched and he was trying to fight an invisible foe – classic signs of a nightmare. And he has so much to have nightmares about… Sam couldn't help but think as she carefully transferred Abbie to the next bed over so that her brother wouldn't hit her. Jack, meanwhile, tried to wake the little boy up.

"Easy, there, pal," he told him. "You're okay, it's just a dream."

Jake's eyes snapped open, and he spent a long moment trying to take in where he was. Confusion was plain across his face, and it mixed with surprise when he realized who was standing over him. "Dad?" he whispered, wide-eyed. "I'm dreaming," he told himself, "I'm still dreaming." Jake shut his eyes tight and rubbed at them, but Jack was still standing there when he reopened them.

"You're not dreaming, pal," he quietly told the boy. "And I'm not your dad. Not really."

Reality seemed to come back like a ton of bricks. Jacob went completely still, and his lip trembled for a moment. However, he firmly set his jaw and no tears escaped. He quickly turned away from them and buried his face in his pillow.

"Jake," Sam started, reaching for his shoulder, but he still wouldn't let her touch him.

"Go away," he demanded as he pushed her hand away.

"We're not going anywhere, Jake," she tried to tell him, but that statement only seemed to make things worse.

"You can't promise!" he shot back. "Go away! Leave me alone!"

TBC...